“Jeremy Davenport helps rebuild flooded home - WLOX” plus 3 more |
- Jeremy Davenport helps rebuild flooded home - WLOX
- Metro has best gain in home prices - Minneapolis Star Tribune
- Knock Back Some Cold Ones Like Ho Chi Minh at Bia Garden - Village Voice
- Couple return home to find their garden has moved next door - Daily Mail
| Jeremy Davenport helps rebuild flooded home - WLOX Posted: 23 Sep 2009 02:26 AM PDT Associated Press - September 23, 2009 5:34 AM ET CHALMETTE, La. (AP) - Jazz trumpeter and singer Jeremy Davenport says it's easy to forget how much rebuilding still needs to be done in south Louisiana. He says it's important to look past neighborhoods like the French Quarter and Garden District, which have rebounded and are largely back to normal since Hurricane Katrina four years ago, and look at areas that still have a long way to go. On Tuesday, Davenport put down his trumpet and picked up some tools to help volunteers rebuild a home in St. Bernard Parish that had taken on 14 feet of water. Davenport says he was nervous about his lack of skill in construction, but by the end of the day, he had learned to hang and float drywall and felt great knowing that in coming months a family would be living there. Copyright 2009 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.  This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now |
| Metro has best gain in home prices - Minneapolis Star Tribune Posted: 29 Sep 2009 07:59 PM PDT But many economists are focusing more on the short term, looking at monthly gains. The 20-metro-area index rose 1.6 percent in July. Just two cities -- Las Vegas and Seattle -- posted declines in July, and 13 of the cities have posted three months of gains. "The general trend is clearly positive, not just in Minneapolis, but in almost all the cities we look at," Blitzer said. He attributes this to "general improvement that we've seen in the economy and with it some improvement in the overall confidence and people's attitudes." Mark Allen, chief executive officer of Minneapolis Area Association of Realtors, said his group is also seeing generally rising prices recently. In July, the median price in the 13-county metro area was $171,000. That was a slight drop from the median price of $173,500 in June, but August rose again to $175,000. He said September's prices will most likely be up. "Our weekly numbers are coming in strong in terms of buyer activity and pending sales and that, over the long term, will put upward pressure in prices," Allen said. Demand is especially strong for homes in the lower price range, he said. Byron Anfinson, a real estate agent with Coldwell Banker Burnet, said he's "definitely" seeing prices rise on the ground. He's been working with clients since the summer who were interested in buying a home for $140,000. "Now there's just like nothing in that price range for them." Last week, a smaller two bedroom was listed for $140,000 in the Nokomis neighborhood of Minneapolis. "It sold in multiple offers," Anfinson said. Two months ago, "you would have gotten so much more for your money," he said.  This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now |
| Knock Back Some Cold Ones Like Ho Chi Minh at Bia Garden - Village Voice Posted: 29 Sep 2009 04:03 PM PDT Although the desire to drink beer outdoors seems like a natural part of human evolution, beer gardens arose for a very particular reason: Dark lager beer needs to be fermented at a low temperature, so Bavarian brewers dug outdoor cellars in which to store the beer, and covered them with gravel and shade trees to keep them cool in summer. Why not set up a few tables and serve the beer there, too? New York was once home to hundreds of German and Czech beer gardens, but most fell by the wayside. Astoria's Bavarian Beer Garden, opened in 1919, is the oldest such establishment still in business. Almost 100 years later, beer gardens are enjoying a renaissance of sorts. Bia Garden, which is billed as New York's first Vietnamese beer garden, sits on a hipsterish block on the Lower East Side, but it gets the unstudied atmosphere just about right: packed and full of chatter, bottles clinking. The backyard space's improvised touches—the plastic tarp to protect from the fall chill, a tangle of overgrown hanging plants—make us feel like we're somewhere messier and more exciting than Manhattan. The restaurant is one in a long line of Michael Huynh's projects this year, as the chef/restaurateur has gone on a restaurant-opening rampage, a feverish burst of industriousness that has resulted in Bar Bao, a handful of Baoguettes (seven more coming soon), Pho Sure, and now Bia Garden. A barbecue/noodle joint and a greenmarket-y Vietnamese restaurant are reportedly next. Huynh told our food blog, Fork in the Road, that he takes his cue from Donald Trump—of all people!—who says that plenty of money can be made in bad times if you snatch up real estate while it's cheap. Eating my way through Huynh's new additions, I've been impressed by how committed he is to keeping prices reasonable, and how well-executed and delicious the food manages to be, no matter how slapdash the opening (although I don't love his banh mi). Bia Garden breaks the spell a bit. In many ways, the restaurant provides a fun evening out with pretty good food, if you order right. But some of the ideas behind it are half-baked, as if someone said, "Hey, wouldn't it be fun if we opened a Vietnamese beer garden, and sold casual food and Asian beer by the six-pack?"—and never got further than that. Walk into Bia Garden and you find yourself in a small foyer with a takeout window and a blackboard printed with a to-go menu that turns out to be hypothetical—they're not doing takeout yet, and they may never do it. Fine, but why the menu? There's also a display of shrimp cracker packs, labeled $2—perfect if there's a wait for a table and you're starving. Except they're not for sale—they're just decoration. Deliver us from this sort of quasi-cool-kid-restaurant fakery! To get to the beer garden in the backyard, you go through a walk-in refrigerator lined with beer, by the kitchen, and out into a small space packed with tables, which is now mostly open-air but will soon sport a greenhouse roof to enable it to run all winter. Let's start with the beer, of which there are 12 bottled varieties to choose from, all imported from Asia. Aside from the BeerLao dark lager, they're all very light lagers, in the mild, low-alcohol style of beers from warm climates. They're the sort that go down like water, and really only taste great when you're very hot. Ranging from $4.50 to $6.50 each, choose from the Thai Singha, the Vietnamese Saigon and 33, the Indian Taj Mahal, and the Filipino San Miguel, among others. You can only order the beer by the six-pack, the dozen, or the case, although you're only charged for what you drink. If you and your friend want to try two different beers, you're out of luck—unless you order two six-packs, but the tables are too tight for that. Huynh's flair for taking challenging food to the hipsters—as he does at Pho Sure by offering a slew of offal—continues here, this time in the guise of curried frog. The coconut-tamarind curry sauce is rich and delicious, but the frog legs within are tough and overcooked, unlikely to covert any amphibian skeptics. Instead, order the off-menu embryonic duck eggs, which actually include the tiny, dinosaur-like duck fetus. The frog curry illustrates a problem that is common throughout the menu: dishes that are not easy to share. But since the menu doesn't offer traditionally sized main dishes—items are labeled small, medium, and large—you expect to eat family-style. The frog curry sauce fills the bowl so much that it's more like a soup; eating from the communal bowl made the table look like a Pollock done in curry. Besides the frog, the Singha clams and curry mussels are both soupy dishes that are also difficult to share. The best part of the clam dish is the broth—a mix of beer, green chilies, kaffir lime leaves, lemongrass, and the clam's liquor—but we had to ask for spoons to slurp it up. Why not serve it with a big baguette, so that everyone can rip off a piece and dip it in?  This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now |
| Couple return home to find their garden has moved next door - Daily Mail Posted: 22 Sep 2009 02:21 AM PDT By Daily Mail Reporter A couple who returned home from Lanzarote claim they were stunned to discover that their back garden had been 'stolen'. Linzi and Phil Wood claimed that while they were away, their path, rockery, plant pots and eight hanging baskets were all moved to next door's garden. The pair alleged that their 600 garden shed was moved and that even their flowers were replanted next door.  Lawn and disorder: Linzi Wood pictured above her stripped garden (left of the fence). She claims her shed, slabs, plants and hanging baskets have all been shifted next door  Spot the difference: The garden on the right is owned by the Woods' neighbour The couple said yesterday the cheeky switch has left a bland space of soil and grass where their garden ornaments used to be while they claim next door now looks more attractive with pretty pot plants and hanging baskets dotted around. According to Linzi, their next-door neighbour claimed to have bought a 'ready made' garden from a third party for 220, without having any idea about where it came from. The Woods were about to put the home in Staffordshire on the market after moving to Lanzarote last month. But when Phil's mother checked on the property and found almost the whole of their garden missing, the pair got in contact with the police, who are now investigating. Linzi, 28, said: 'I had a call from my mother-in-law to ask what we had done to our garden. 'So we asked her whether she had her glasses on because we hadn't done anything and we were pretty shocked when she said our whole garden had apparently been moved next door.  Before the swap: The Woods' garden was friendly and welcoming 'I got the next flight home and found that the lot had been taken - the slabs, plant pots, plants and the garden shed. 'My husband spent weeks building and it's not a small shed - I don't know how on earth it was moved. 'I was so angry and frustrated. All you have to do is look over the fence and the whole of my garden is there. 'I was furious but sometimes we can't help but laugh about it - it's just so bizarre.' Angry Linzi believes the property will now be seriously devalued. She told The Mirror: 'Most of what I said to my neighbour was unrepeatable – I think I was just screaming "it's mine, it's mine".  How it was: Next door's garden is pictured looking bare before the Woods moved abroad to Lanzarote 'He said he bought a ready-made garden for 220 from somebody else, not realising that it was our property and that it was being removed from the back of our house, just feet away. 'My husband spent 600 building that shed from scratch and the plants must be about 80 as well. 'We're trying to sell our house but now the garden looks terrible. 'It has completely devalued the house.' A spokesperson for Staffordshire Police said: 'We are investigating an alleged crime of theft at the property and are currently looking into it.' The couple have four children, Joe 7, Emily, 5, Charlie, 2, and 9-month-old Mary and now live in Lanzarote.
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Of course the neighbours knew, give me a break whats to investigate the photos prove the shed is theirs so just return it. If the neigbours are out of pocket its because they bought stolen goods. I had a similar situation with a bike years ago. I reported it to the police told them who had it and gave them the serial number and identifying marks one being a red bungee cord that was still on the rack. The police said they would investigate but after hearing nothing for a few days I aproached the bloke who had it and he said he had never even heard from the police but had bought the bike from a shop in town known fopr uits dodgy dealings.
Later i dated a girl who's father was a police officer. He had his bike pinched and sold for parts all over the city but the police got every one of the parts back and he rebuilt his bike, strange that??
- Black Dog, Kosovo, 22/9/2009 16:42
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